The Page of Shame

This page is devoted to companies that continue to abuse and throw away their most valuable asset, their employees!

All information on this page is PUBLIC knowledge

WAL-MART STORES, INC.

I was amazed by the amount of websites workers and former employees have about this company. I have a family member who is an injured employee of Wal-Mart. After they were objected to harassment and intimidation by management, supervisors, even coworkers, I started searching the Internet about Wal-Mart Inc. The results were shocking to say the least. Below are just some of the websites I have found about this company.

Wal-Mart employees not given the chance to submit a workers' comp claim.
Attention Wal-Mart workers: Please do not report injuries

The article linked above details State of Washington statements about Wal-Mart. L&I officials stated among other things that Wal-Mart "repeatedly failed" to respond to worker claims, or pay workers their benefits, in a timely way; that it prematurely cut off employees' replacement wages or "miscalculated" them; that it has shown "consistently poor record keeping," and has even failed to provide "adequate first aid facilities." L&I's Gary Moore also said that in some instances Wal-Mart employees were not even given the chance to submit a workers' comp claim.

By these statements, we thought there was a state government actually acting responsibly to protect its workers. In a settlement reached between L&I and the company, Wal-Mart was allowed to remain self-insured but was required to have its workers' compensation claims administered by an independent third party for eight years.

But now new details have come forth to strongly cast suspicion on L&I's moral character.

In the Feb. 15, 2002 Yakima Herald, L&I spokesman Robert Nelson suggested the settlement was used as leverage to ensure that a warehouse was built in Washington and not in another state, saying: "We wanted something that held their feet to the fire, and this building does. If they were to decide to not build here, parts of the agreement get ugly for them." Nelson reportedly suggested that, had the company chosen another state, the company may have not been able to handle its claims for 20 years, as opposed to eight.

Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO President Rick Bender says, "I'd like to think our state agencies aren't making special deals when it comes to workplace safety and other important standards. The workers who have been, or will be, injured at Wal-Mart shouldn't have their interests traded off by state agencies."

Read more about this development here.

Of all the sites About Wal-Mart, this one is the most detailed.
www.walmartwatch.com

The battle against Wal-Mart is about maintaining quality community living standards. The legacy of Wal-Mart isn't lower prices. The true legacy of Wal-Mart is lower living standards for hard working Americans. The fact is for every Wal-Mart store that opens, jobs are lost to the community, the tax bases shrinks, the number of workers with health benefits declines, and the number of workers eligible for welfare increases. We have to confront Wal-Mart to stop the retail giant from turning good jobs into bad jobs, from turning taxpaying workers and their families into welfare-eligible families supported by taxpayers and from turning workers into the ranks of the uninsured.

These are former Wal-Mart employee websites

Wal-Mart Employee Abuse Forum: http://members.aol.com/walmopboy/abuse/frame1.htm

Wal-Mart Personal Injury Survivor: www.walmartsurvivor.com/

WakeUpWalMart.com

Wal-Mart Wal of Shame

As long as big profits go straight to the corporate office, there is no incentive for Wal-Mart to be good citizens. They have demonstrated that once established in a neighborhood, they care little about being a good neighbor. Their primary function is to funnel money from your community store to the corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Only 38% of Wal-Mart employees have company provided health insurance compared
to a national average that shows 60% of employees are covered by company plans.
Wal-Mart Settles Employment Discrimination Claim Of Two Applicants Who Are Deaf

99 Verdicts Against Wal-Mart
By Lewis L. Laska  Member of the Nashville, Tennessee Bar
Published by the Wal-Mart Litigation Project
901 Church Street
Nashville, Tennessee 37203
Fax: (615) 255-6289
www.wal-martlitigation.com

To read about these cases click here, These are past lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart.
Current Legal Developments Concerning Wal-Mart
The current cases are from October 1999 to January 2000. To read about these current cases click here

The BOEING COMPANY

Boeing to Ill Workers: "It's All In Your Head"
Read An Investigation of the Boeing Company  Here.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), "The MCS Debate: A Medical Streetfight."

MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) patients commonly suffer headaches, chronic fatigue, memory lapses dizziness, stomach problems, rashes, hives and disturbed vision. Researchers attribute many central nervous system disorders to a form of brain damage called toxic encephalopathy (brain inflammation due to poisons). "I feel like I have the flu all the time," said Wendell Boggs, a former Boeing worker at Auburn who has worked with chemicals for the better part of 30 years.

Faye Schrum and untold dozens of current and former Boeing workers continue to live with medical problems ranging from nausea and nose bleeds to impaired vision and brain damage - they blame on chemicals at the Auburn plant, the top-secret Developmental Center in south Seattle and other Boeing facilities. And, like four years ago, many of them continue to fall through the cracks of a system that, on paper was designed to help workers who have been hurt on the job.

What is Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) doing about this.

Fully aware of the huge financial stake that it has in debunking the existence of MCS, Boeing is making its imposing presence felt at the Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I), which oversees the state's workers' compensation program. Over the past few years, dozens of chemically injured workers seeking financial assistance have been turned away by Boeing and by L&I. Boeing and the state have even refused to pay for diagnostic tests that sick workers say they need to help them unravel the mystery of their illness.

'I've watched how unsympathetic the power structure has been. It's scary.' Sue Ammeter, the governor's Committee on Disability Issues and Employment

Observers say, however, that Boeing has shifted into damage control mode instead of doing what it can to prevent workplace illnesses in the first place. Boeing's in-house Health and Safety Institute, for example, has been underfunded and its efforts curtailed, according to a former institute researcher.

"Every Boeing worker I have talked to has horror stories about the working conditions," said Liz Moses of the Washington Toxics Coalition. "There are some severe problems over there, and there is no reason to assume Boeing is going to do the right thing."

A Bureaucratic Nightmare

Before sick or injured Boeing workers ever go to court for relief, they usually start out in the Kafkaesque world of workers' compensation claims, insurance companies and independent medical examiners. To survive being snowed under by flurries of paperwork, workers will often maintain as many as 10 binders of documentation, labeled by doctor, insurance company or government agency. Like many government-run programs, Washington's workers' compensation system is a labyrinth of red tape and arcane language.

The most extensive documentation I found about worker abuse has involved Boeing. If everything discovered was put here, this would be the longest page on the Internet.